On more than one occasion while watching this movie I thought to myself "Why did I come to see this?". I felt that the score on this website rated the movie a bit higher than its worth but hey, that's what the mysteriously weighted votes came out at so someone must think its great. Essentially this movie deals with four girls running away from their female circumcision ceremony and taking refuge with a woman who herself had not allowed her daughter to be 'cut' a few years previously. The movie follows the controversy and confrontations of people and ideologies in the face of this woman protecting, with the use of her own 'magic powers', the petrified children against tradition, religious powers and patriarchal politics. The story is not overly complicated and the performances range from great down to the standard you'd expect to see at a primary school production. Cinematography and special effects don't really come into it either for this is storytelling at its most basic though the subject matter does lend the movie a level of emotion and empathy it perhaps would not otherwise have. Ultimately this is a movie with a message for the parts of the world where female circumcision still takes place and for this, rather than for any merit it has a movie, that it is important that this movie was made and is hopefully seen by those affected. I wouldn't go out of my way to watch this again but I'm not part of the true target audience!
